Slowing housing market driving up prices in Southwest Florida

Home sales are slowing down, and at the same time, prices are rising. The National Association of Realtors found existing home sales fell nearly 6% last month from June.

After months of houses selling above the asking price nationwide and here in Southwest Florida, that trend is over.

One broker said he thinks the numbers are worse locally.

“In my 22 years experience, I’ve never seen it move as fast as it was. I mean, back in easter, every deal I had was multiple offers. You know, few months later, it’s crickets. I mean, I have hardly any showings or any offers. So the buyers are just sitting there,” said Realmark Realty Broker Ted Stout of Cape Coral.

Stout remains hopeful for the housing market in Southwest Florida. “I think we’re gonna level off this fall. We have a traditional big migration of snowbirds who come down. They’ve been sitting on the fence watching prices drop. But the problem is winter’s coming, it’s right around the corner. And they have to buy a place before winter. And we’re just seeing that now the last two weeks, I don’t have any good data on it. But I know what’s going on. We’ve had a huge increase in sales.”

The July sales report is the latest evidence that the housing market is slowing as homebuyers are hit with sharply higher mortgage rates than a year ago. Home prices have also continued to rise. The national median home price jumped 10.8% in July from a year earlier to $403,800.

“In the peak of the market, which was January, we had 10.5 showings per listing that is dropped all the way down in July to 5.1. A 50%. Cut in showings per listing. So that’s just a that’s an accurate if we don’t have showings, we don’t have offers. We don’t have contracts, we don’t have sales,” said Stout.

House hunters had a wider selection of properties in July, as the number of properties for sale rose 4.8% from June to 1.31 million homes. That was unchanged from July last year.